Runaway attorney mortgages house for half a million dollars

Timothy McCabe, the former Lake Worth attorney who is alleged to have gone on the lam with up to $8 million in client money, mortgaged his gated Boca Raton home for $500,000 late last month.

The 4,000-square-foot house owned with wife Donna McCabe was purchased by the couple in 1999 for $336,000. Total market value this year is $454,710, according to the property appraiser’s office.

Palm Beach County official records show a $500,000 mortgage taken out August 23 by the McCabes, a loan from Mitchell and Doris Zogby, Donna McCabe’s parents.

A week before McCabe went missing in early April, he signed the deed to the home into Donna’s name only and left it in a conspicuous place in the home where she could find it.

McCabe turned himself in to the FBI in June. The 55-year-old, who has three daughters, pleaded not guilty last month to wire fraud and fraud on a financial institution. He remains in jail without bail.

His attorney, Robert Gershman, told a judge this month the case is likely to end in a plea deal over a jury trial, but he has remained tight lipped about where McCabe was during his two months in hiding or what happened to his client’s money.

It’s a question his former clients still want answered. But the fact that he had to mortgage his house may be a sign that the money is long gone. A former colleague, Shane SantaCroce, said shortly after McCabe went missing that he believed the money was lost to bad investments.

Still, some former McCabe clients attended his plea hearing last month hoping for more details on what turned a seemingly mild-mannered family man into a fugitive.

“He took the money and ran,” said Nancy Buchanan, a 70-year-old Lake Worth resident, who said McCabe stole $76,000 from her. “He either spent it or stashed it.”